GWS Guest Lecture Notes
• Anti-Rape Movement
o Calls attention to and attempts to put an end to sexual assault
• Corroboration
o To double check/verify, could not go on the evidence of the victim’s statement
alone
• Lynching
o A group would act terror upon a single individual (usually a black man) because
of sexual assault they may have committed
• Rape Myths
o Rape is a crime of sex
▪ It is actually an act of violence
o There is no such thing as rape
o Most rapes are interracial (between members of different races, usually,
mythically, black or Hispanic on white)
▪ It can happen to anyone
o Rape only exists in the urban ghetto
▪ It can happen in locations that are not stereotypical
• Myths about Rapists
o Most rapists are black and poor
▪ People who commit sexual assault can be from any racial group
o Black men are predisposed to raping, especially white women
▪ Justified slavery
o All rapists are strangers to their victims
▪ The majority of rapes are committed by someone the victim knows
o Rapists are sadistic or sex-starved psychopaths
o Regular men don’t rape or don’t need to rape
• Myths about rape victims
o It is difficult to rape a woman; if she really does not want it, she can resist
o Women desire or invite rape
▪ If someone actually wants it to happen, it is not rape anymore
o Women’s appearance and dress provoke rape
o Women say no when they really mean yes
o Women of color are very strong, so they handle rape better
o Women of color are more sexually promiscuous than other women
o Women make false allegations of rape out of revenge or spite
o Only a chaste woman can be raped
• 3 things that make someone a good victim:
o Moral o Not responsible to the harm done to them
o experiences above average harm
• Victim-Blaming: holding the victim in some way responsible for the assault
• Revictimization: the blame and stigmatizing responses to victims by police or others and
the trauma that victims experience following the rape itself
o 1. Police: interrogate the victim as if they’ve committed the crime
o 2. Emergency Room: wait to be checked out may be too long
o 3. Legal System: trials don’t happen right away, so the victim has to relive it
• Victim-centered Approach: the victim’s wishes, safety, and well-being take priority in all
matters and procedures
• Only 1/3 of women disclose their assault right after their attack
o Another 1/3 of women tell people of the assault a couple days later
o And the last 1/3 don’t tell anyone until a year or more later
10/18/16
• Traditionally, domestic violence has been seen as a private family issue
• First domestic violence shelter wasn’t opened until 1979 in MN
• Public Sphere vs. Private Sphere
o Private: anything that happens in the home
o Public: anything outside the home (work, school, etc.)
• Intersectionality and Domestic Violence
o Immigrants
o LGBT
o Disability
o Cultural/Traditional Values
o Class
o Religion
o Native American
o African Americans
o Latinos
• Intimate Partner Violence
o Behaviors that constitute domestic violence are both emotional and physical
▪ Throwing objects, denying care, confining, property destruction,
degrading, threatening, insulting, physical/sexual abuse, murder
▪ Many survivors of IPV report that the emotional abuse had a greater
negative impact than physical abuse
o A woman is most at risk to kill or be killed when she attempts to report abuse, or
leaves, and her children are also at greatest risk at this time
o Women age 16-24 experience IPV at highest rates o Battering may increase during pregnancy, which contributes to low birth weight
and other medical complications
• Johnson, “Domestic Violence”
o Gender Symmetry: suggests that IPV is perpetrated by men and women in
roughly equal numbers
o Gender Asymmetry: suggests that men are most often the perpetrators of IPV
o Three types of IPV:
▪ Intimate Terrorism
• Violence is one tactic among many in an attempt for long term
control over one’s partner
• Power and control wheel
▪ Violent Resistance
• Ways that the victim responds to intimate terrorism, for reasons
of defense, retaliation, or escape
• Why does it take so much time for many women to escape the
relationships? (262)
o Takes a long time to develop a plan
o Psychological abuse is so bad that a woman is afraid her
husband will take her children from her
o Economic dependence
▪ Situational Couple Violence
• The tension or emotions of a particular situation that lead up to
one outburst of violence (265)
o Johnson argues that some violence is embedded in general patterns of power
and control (#1 and #2) but some is not (#3)
o #1 is primarily male perpetrated, #2 is primarily female perpetrated (because it is
a response to #1), and #3 is roughly evenly perpetrated
• Gender Theory of Intimate Terrorism
o Why, in heterosexual relationships, is intimate terrorism almost always
perpetrated by men against women?
▪ Average sex differences in size and strength and attitudes toward
violence/experience with violence (individual level)
▪ Misogyny and gender traditionalism (individual level)
▪ Meaning of violence differs depending on gender of perpetrator (social
level)
▪ Patriarchal views of marriage/relationships (social level)
▪ Gendering of resources (social level)
• Includes gender wage gap, women’s responsibility for childcare,
and male-dominated criminal justice system
10/25/16 • FREE WRITING: How might social media be used in relationships to foster power and
control? Have you or someone you know ever been in a relationship where technology
was used for this purpose? Describe.
o In a relationship, it is very possible that one of them could create a fake social
media account to try and track what the other is doing. If you can see what your
significant other is always doing, you’ll have more control over their life. I
personally have not been in a situation like this, but a friend of mine has. His
girlfriend created 3 or 4 fake accounts on various social media to see if he was
cheating on her.
• “Young, in Love, and Sharing a Password”
o It has become fashionable for young couples to share their passwords with each
other as a sign of trust
▪ “I have nothing to hide from him/her”
▪ “We’d never do anything to hurt each other”
• “Smartphones Used to Stalk, Control Domestic Violence Victims”
o “Smartphones and GPS have transformed domestic violence shelters across the
US”
▪ 85% working with victims who were tracked by GPS
▪ 75% worked with victims whose partners eavesdropped on them using
apps
▪ Nearly half have policies against using smart phones premises
o How is this about power and control, beyond knowing where the person is?
▪ Power vs. Privacy?
▪ Assertion that this is for use with kids?
11/1/16
• “When Battered Women Kill”
o 48% of intrafamilial homicides in 1984, or the deaths of over 2,000 people, were
between partners
▪ 2/3 (1,310) were wives killed by husbands, 1/3 (806) were husbands
killed by wives
o Women perpetrate less than 15% of homicides in the US
o The police had been previously called to the house in over 85-90% of these cases
o Women tend to get longer sentences for killing their husbands rather than when
husbands kill their wives
o Women tend to kill their husbands when the believe that their death or death of
their children is imminent
o Men usually kill their wives because they felt rejected, their wives left them, or
they felt that she was being unfaithful (Sex Role Threat Homicide)
• Reasons why women kill (Victim Precipitated Homicide) o Protect a child
▪ Husband was beating a child, so while he was sleeping, the mother and
child killed the husband
o During an attack
▪ Grabbing something nearby to fend off her husband, it happened to be a
knife, and she killed him
o When assault was imminent/During the “warning phase”
• “A Woman with a Sword”
o A sword is a weapon of chivalry and honor, if she used “gun” or “knife” it could
have been a different story
o In media, if women are trying to be violent, they are usually doing it in a sneaky
way
▪ Poison, hiring someone to kill rather than doing it themselves, stabbing
someone in the back, hitting someone with their car
11/3/16
• Various Approaches to Reproductive Rights
o The traditional (constitutional) approach to reproductive rights is based on the
idea that all people have a constitutionally protected right to privacy, or “choice”
o From this perspective, the role of govt. is one of non-intervention: govt. should
not impose political, religious, o
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